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026 “ “Trouble Brewing Above And Below.”


Tank had hardly even noticed the irritation in his drinking partners’ eyes when he had abruptly excused himself. He had more pressing concerns than to worry about hurting the feelings of a young, pretty lady.

Something was not right. The enhancer technology implanted in his brain stem was among the most sophisticated wetware available in the known galaxy and not prone to sudden failure. Whatever had caused the communications blackout was unlikely due to an internal malfunction.

Now back on his feet and slowly making his way across the large reception hall and towards the elevator bank, Tank once again noticed the group of people who had gathered by the exit. He couldn’t make out faces however; the colorful streamers hanging from the ceiling were a wonderful party decoration but made it near impossible to spy across the room.

He brushed them aside as he walked but to no avail, there were simply too many of them.

What he could see, were their bodies and he thought they were standing too still. Differently to the other partygoers these people were not dancing, no rhythmic swinging nor the relaxed sway that would come from consuming too much alcohol.

These men and women were standing perfectly still. Almost as if they were waiting for something.

He had nearly reached the elevators when a small disturbance caught his attention.

A clearly drunken partygoer had attempted to head into the staircase but he had found that it had been blocked by another man who seemed to refuse him access. There was a bit of cursing and moaning by the intoxicated partygoer until he apparently lost his will to fight for his right to leave and turned back.

The man who hadn’t allowed him through the doors appeared to belong to the same group which had assembled by the elevators.

Things were getting stranger by the second.

Tank finally cleared the area dominated by the low hanging ribbons. He caught a glance of one of the men by the elevators. There was nothing suspicious about him. He was of medium height and his facial features were East Asian which could have made him a nikkeijin or an Earth citizen. His hair was cut extremely short and he wore a black dinner jacket with a small purple orchid attached to his breast pocket. The man’s visage showed little emotion while he calmly observed the room.

He turned ever so slightly, allowing Tank a glimpse under his jacket. And there, he was quite sure of hit, he noticed a metallic glint. It disappeared almost instantly when the man shifted again.

Tank froze. He studied the man’s suit and was sure he could see it bulge unnaturally just above his right hip. A quick glance at the other people in the group revealed similar protrusions.

Then the man with the purple orchid caught Tank’s glance and held it.

The CCiD agent tried his best to look inconspicuous as he slowly turned away, clapping a nearby man on the shoulder as if he was his best friend. The partygoer seemed irritated and Tank quickly grabbed him, pulled him close and put his massive arm around his shoulder, making it impossible for him to escape his grasp.

“Man,” Tank said with a smile as he steered him back towards the bar. “How have you been? I haven’t seen you around this place in weeks.”

The startled man now completely swept up looked at the imposing Tank with widening eyes. “I … I work in personnel,” he stammered. “I’ve been here all week.”

“You don’t say, Jack,” Tank continued, barely listening, instead trying to throw a quick look over his shoulder. The decorations were now obstructing him from view again.

“My name is Oshii,” the man said confused.

“That’s right,” Tank said and gave him a disarming smile.

“Say I don’t remember seeing you here before.”

Tank release Oshii and clapped him on the back good-naturedly. His powerful arm nearly throwing the short man to the floor. “Well, it was nice to catch up, Jack, we should talk more some time,” he said and left him behind as he approached the bar.

“Y … Yeah,” the man said, scratching his head with bewilderment as he watched him go.

Tank found Kara Katanagi still sitting at the bar, looking dejectedly at her cup of saki. He moved right up next to her. “Kara listen, is there another way out of here?”

The woman looked up and a large smile appeared on her lips. “Tank.”

“A way out?” he repeated.

“The elevators and the stairs, I guess,” she said after a moment’s consideration. “It’s a lot of stairs though. I once thought about taking them but I got only about three floors down before ““

Tank didn’t have time for anecdotes. “Do you have a quiet place somewhere away from the party?”

At that her eyes lightened up. “Sure, my office is on the upper floor. It’s private. Very private.”

“Where is it?”

“Room 234A, up the stairs to your left, left again and right at the end of the hall,” she said. “Do you want me to show it to you?” She seemed to want to do that pretty badly.

“You go ahead; I meet you there in a few minutes.”

She nodded and turned but then stopped herself and looked back at Tank as if she had reconsidered. “Listen, maybe we are moving a bit fast here, I mean I don’t even know you at all. Perhaps we should talk some more and ““

“Now!” Tank didn’t yell but his voice was firm as steel.

It made her gulp. She reached for her cup of saki, emptied it in one go, nodded to him affirmably and then trotted off.

Jackson Slade’s communication link had also been terminated unexpectedly and he was as concerned over this as Tank had been.

First he had found the hidden force field which kept him from entering the underground levels of the building and then the com link to both Tank and Case had suddenly cut out. Adding to this, their strange meeting with the receptionist earlier and he was beginning to get a sense of real dread coming from this place.

His first instinct was to get out. He wasn’t all too proud of that but soon realized that it was not just a flight response. If he could return to his hover outside he could try to raise Case again and perhaps get to the bottom of the black out.

Then there was the matter of Case’s report on the receptionist. He had been using stims, that much seemed certain now but what she had found out could signify a real breakthrough at understanding the exact consequences of using the illegal computer programs. Scientific study on them was precariously inconclusive.

More importantly however, he realized, were the practical implications. If stims could be used to somehow circumvent people’s firewalls to gain direct access to their enhancers it was only a small step to give creed to Case’s earlier and previously farfetched theory that Black and by implication Grayson himself was able to manipulate people to do their bidding such as attacking CCiD agents in pursuit of a criminal in a packed commuter train.

Slade turned a corner to head out into the lobby when he noticed a man crossing the room. Something about him felt wrong and once again he was gripped by his flight impulse. This time it probably saved his life.

He backtracked noiselessly to press himself again the wall at the corner moments before the man turned around with a nasty looking weapon in his hand.

Peeking around the corner, Slade’s hand went for his Seburo Super Seven at the small of his back.

The man with the rifle had not spotted him and had his back turned towards him now. Slade could have easily come out of his cover and forced the man to disarm himself.

Two more men appeared by the exit which made Slade reconsider. They were all armed and he figured that revealing himself now as an MSD operative would put him in an extremely precarious situation which could easily end up with him extremely dead.

There was of course no immediate reason to believe these men were killers but there was something about their blank expressions he didn’t like. And then of course there were the weapons. They looked like assault plasma rifles and he couldn’t remember ever seeing one of those on Earth.

When he had been in Starfleet he had come across Orion raiders and Breen shock troops who had been quite fond of that kind of equipment but on Earth weapons of this kind were unheard of.

These men meant business. Deadly business.

The three men, all of them of medium build and height and of East Asian descent, didn’t talk to each other but from what he could tell they were in fact communicating.

So the blackout didn’t affect them
, he thought. This could only mean one thing. These men were directly responsible for it.

A horrible thought crossed his mind. There were a whole bunch of people in this building, thankfully only about a tiny fraction of the regular workforce. There would have been thousands of potential victims if these men had decided to come here during the day.

With a gentle hum, large shutters began to seal off the main entrance, nullifying any hope for Slade to escape and reach his hover outside. The three men seemed contend to stay in the lobby for now.

Slade considered his options. He had to get word out to somebody outside of what was happening. This would be difficult without communications. And even if he was able to alert somebody the chances that they were able to do much about what might be happening here were slim. He hated to admit it but most of Earth’s authorities were ill equipped to handle this kind of situation.

He had to take action.

He decided against using the elevators and found himself in the emergency staircase, looking up at thousands of steps.

“This is not going to be fun.”


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